


Flat Packers

by Sholio



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Banter, Fluff, Future Fic, Humor, IKEA Furniture, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 07:49:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15626115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Steve and Dustin vs. flat-pack furniture.





	Flat Packers

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not actually sure when assemble-it-yourself, IKEA-style furniture really caught on in the US. I think I first remember buying it in 2001 or 2002 or so, though I'm sure it was around before then. There weren't IKEA outlets in the Midwest yet at that time, that I can recall; we got ours at a big box store. (I've actually never been inside an IKEA store. They don't have them in Alaska.)
> 
> Anyway, I had to assemble a bunch of furniture today and if I'm going to suffer, so are our favorite 80s nerds.

"Did they even have this stuff when we were kids?" Dustin asked, surveying the pile of boxes in the middle of his crappy grad-student apartment.

"Dunno." Steve was in the process of stealing a Coke from the fridge. "It's not like my parents would've been caught dead buying furniture from K-Mart. When Nance and -- when _we_ moved out, we got furniture from garage sales like normal people." It was hard to break the habit of dodging any references to himself, Nancy, and Jonathan together, even around people who had known them even longer than they'd been dating.

"I've been to your apartment and I think most of your furniture is _still_ from garage sales."

"And yet," Steve said, cracking the pop-top, "you still think I can help you put all this together."

"Steve," Dustin said. He was twenty-six and working on a PhD, but to Steve there were times when he could still hear fourteen-year-old Dustin in the way Dustin said his name: part _You're an idiot, Steve_ and part _Steve, help_. "You _know_ how athletic I am. It'll take me three days and I'll end up with an inside-out desk embedded in a bookcase with two and a half shelves. You're literally the only person I know who has any hand-eye coordination whatsoever."

"Max."

"She's too scary to ask for something like this."

"Lucas."

"Just deployed to Germany."

"Nancy."

"See above," Dustin said, "under 'scary'." He waved a bag of ranch flavored potato chips at Steve. "I have refreshments."

"Fine," Steve sighed, "it's not like I was doing anything anyway." -- Like he wouldn't have done it anyway even if he _was_ busy, and like he didn't know Dustin wouldn't have asked him even if Max, Lucas, and Nancy all were waving their hands in the air to volunteer. He and Dustin didn't see much of each other these days, even if they were still living in the same general vicinity (well, give or take driving an hour or two), and he still wasn't over being weirdly flattered whenever Dustin made transparent excuses to hang out with him for a half-day here and there.

Dustin grinned and brandished a kitchen knife. "Ready to open boxes?"

Fifteen minutes later, there were pieces of cardboard and furniture everywhere, and the two of them were poring over the instructions on the floor, with two open sodas and assorted bags of chips and cookies between them. 

"You got a phillips-head screwdriver around here?" Steve asked.

"Why do I need one of those?" Dustin asked, genuinely baffled.

"Because it says right here that you need it."

"Uh ... do you maybe have one in the trunk?"

This was off to a good start.

*

" _Why_ are there twelve different screws in seven different sizes? Why can't they make everything the same size? And why the fuck doesn't it tell you which direction _these_ fucking things go?"

"Language," Dustin said cheerfully.

"Fuck off, shithead."

*

"That's not the way screws turn, Steve."

"... I know that."

"Rightie tightie, leftie loosie."

"Shut up."

"If _I_ know that and you don't, I'm starting to wonder why I asked you to help."

"Me too, asshole."

"Fuck you, Steve."

*

"Did we just put on half of these shelves upside down?"

*

"Dude! Left! No, your _other_ left -- god damn it, Steve."

"Your security deposit will cover that."

*

"Hey, Steve, you know how we couldn't figure out which way those went 'cause they're identical? So we figured it didn't matter?"

"I don't think I like where this is going."

"I just realized they're mirror images of each other."

"... and we put them on the right way by total accident?"

"Guess again. _Fuck."_

*

"I thought you were _good_ at this! I thought shop was the only class in high school you got an 'A' in!"

"Hey, I aced PE, dude. And for the record, this is nothing _at all_ like sports."

Whatever Dustin meant to say to that was interrupted by the ringing phone. He was back a moment later, holding out the cordless handset. "It's Nancy. She says something with tentacles is trying to eat people at the water park and she needs you to come and bring some nets and your swim trunks."

"Oh, thank God," Steve mumbled, reaching for the phone.

*

It wasn't until they reconvened at Dustin's apartment to dry off (because it was the closest) that Steve remembered the half-assembled furniture, two seconds before Nancy squished in the door after him, stopped, and said, "Dustin, are you moving out?"

"It'd probably be easier," Dustin's voice came from the bathroom, where he was rummaging around for towels.

Jonathan came squelching in behind Nancy and dripped his way into the kitchen, where he morosely poured a quart or so of water out of his camera bag down the sink.

"Hey!" Dustin protested, coming out of the bathroom with an assortment of mismatched towels and a couple of bedsheets. "Absolutely _no_ baby kraken in my plumbing! It's bad enough that _someone_ put a hole in the wall earlier."

"It was a dent," Steve said. "A very small dent. And you were going the wrong way."

"The hell I was, I told you to go left."

"I _was_ going left!"

Dustin opened his mouth, then made small, thoughtful rotating gestures in front of him. "Oh. Yeah. I meant right."

Nancy looked up from toweling off her hair. "Would you guys like help?"

"No," Steve said.

" _Yes,"_ Dustin said emphatically.

*

They were actually almost done. With four pairs of hands to hold things and to help wedge ill-fitting corners into something resembling a right angle, the bookcase, dresser, and desk were put together by the time the pizza arrived. 

"You guys are the best," Dustin declared, passing around beers. Jonathan waved it off; he wasn't strictly a nondrinker, but usually preferred not to. 

The three of them were -- Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan -- were taking up most of Dustin's secondhand couch, sprawled in a cheerfully tired tangle and wearing an assortment of whatever Dustin had that was clean and would kind of fit them while their clothes dried. Dustin flopped on the only other sittable item in the room, a beanbag chair.

"You need chairs, dude," Steve said.

"Shut up, Steve, I'm not used to having grownup furniture. Just because _you_ guys have a house and stuff, with rooms, like actual adults ..."

"I think you're doing fine," Nancy said, and poked Steve in the ribs. "We actually need to get some furniture that's not from a yard sale."

"Furniture that matches? I don't know. It sounds suspicious. I don't trust it."

Jonathan wormed his sock-clad toes under Steve's leg. "We just killed a kraken. I think we can handle a trip to a discount furniture outlet."

"Nancy," Steve said, "the kraken ate Jonathan and replaced him with a doppelganger. My bat's in the trunk."

Nancy looked over at Dustin. "I don't know these people. I've never seen them before in my life."

Dustin slouched down in the beanbag chair and grinned. And Steve sprawled on the couch and thought about how lucky he was, that he had all of these people in his life, more than a decade after he'd met them, long since any number of monsters and dumbass decisions could've put an end to all of it. He was the luckiest damn guy on Earth.

Also, the more he looked at it, the more he thought one of the shelves on Dustin's bookcase was _definitely_ the wrong way around. He wasn't about to say anything.


End file.
